Most days I'm about a 3, sometimes it's more like 4. If I'm reading a book or doing something like that, where I'm really focusing on the visualization, I can get to 2. The only time I ever get to 1 is when I'm laying in bed at night about to fall asleep.

I have real trouble sleeping sometimes, and one of the things I do to help is put on instrumental music (lately, a lot of jazz sax), and then pick some random scenario, like:

"if I could be king of the world what policy changes would I make?"

Or "if I ever get to have kids, what kind of things would I most want to teach them?"

Or "Let's design the perfect floorplan for my dream home"

And as I begin to drift off, but while still consciously aware, I can see things in stunning detail, but it's always like they're semi transparent. That's not a great example, because there's no backdrop, but it's the best I've got.

I play DND with a "theatre of the mind" battle system (no map or miniatures, we just remember where we are) with a a dude who's a 5 and I have no idea how he does it.

Is this new, somehow? I've always recognized that the people around me think differently. I even recognized that there was a spectrum.

I'm definitely a #1, and always recognized that about myself. I'm like to write, and I think that activity demonstrates the spectrum well. Stephen King once said that he doesn't understand why people struggle with writing. He just pictures the story in his head, and writes what he sees. When I read that, I instantly recognized myself. That's how I write.

But I also know that some people write almost like they are putting together a puzzle. They choose certain words that go together well, and they are constructing their narrative brick by brick. I think poetry is often constructed like that, and I think those prose writers have a more poetic sensibility than others, and that sort of writing reflects it. That might explain why I really don't care for that style of writing much, because I am extremely bad at poetry. That construction style just doesn't work for me.

I have severe 5 aphantasia. It was such a relief when a name was put to it.

I am probably 1/2, but creating images in my mind is not something I do on a daily basis, which is probably why I lack creativity in certain areas. Also I had hard time remembering faces for most of my life, and only recently it get slightly better.

Also I've noticed that the more I think about how something looks like the less I am able to picture it in my head, sometimes even not being able to remember my crush's face which is probably strange as fuck.

One time I had a dream about the ascii game I played. I dreamed it both IN TEXT, and my brain produced images of the people, places, and things at the same time as I usually imagined them.

I find it gets better with practice to some degree, if I go for a long stretch reading more or less fiction I find it affects my imagination and ability to visualize with more or less detail and memorability. I don't think it'll bridge the gap to 5 necessarily, but it might bump a 4 to a 3 or a 2 to a 1.

Do you guys sometimes also get the weird feeling of: "this is my body, this is planet earth, this is my flat and I live here." Sometimes that happens. And when that happens, I usually think about things like how the universe came to be the big bang, the laws of physics fighting each other until settling on a seady state. Then the Earth is created, millions of years of evolution go by and here you are, sitting on the toilet. The entire chain of thought only lasts for about five seconds and then you're again stuck with the feeling of "I am back here on planet Earth". Do you guys also get that sometimes?

I'm somewhere between 5 and 4 if I'm really trying. Never felt like a handicap or anything before

am I the only one like this?

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Too fun and interesting to be a shitpost. Half my family are 1 the other half are 5. Woo!

There are times I can be "sucked into" a book. I'm in there, seeing the story like its real. I forget about everything else momentarily. Very jarring when my concentration is broken, and suddenly I remember who/where I am.

Also once had the classic "dreaming in code" when stuck on a programming project in school. Words can't properly describe the experience, besides I was dreaming in code. I shot out of bed and immediately typed up the working solution to the problem I was stuck on.